Happy Halloween card

Hi blogging friends

Sorry for my long absence:  I have been helping out with preparing for a stall to sell loom band creations (which if you don't already know, are super-popular with kids at the moment!) at my daughter's School Fair (which was held last Sunday).  My daughter made most of the loom band creations which has taken her about 5 months!  We were running the stall to raise money for charity so attending to all the details was very time-consuming (plus I was making a few loom band creations too).  Our stall ended up raising $121 - and when you add a few donations from other people and sales to family/friends, the total ended up being $181!  Woo hoo!  The weather was perfect for the occasion - around 25 deg C (77 deg F) and sunny - which was fantastic but also very lucky because at 2 am the following morning, the storms began and it was very wild with heavy rain and flash-flooding well into the next day.  Soooo glad that we didn't have weather like that for the Fair - it would have been a disaster!

The card I am sharing today is a Halloween card which I made for my daughter and now that I have given to her, I can share it here on my blog.  This is also my entry for the Die Cuttin Divas Challenge #189 of Happy Halloween where you must have at least one diecut on your creation.

I really enjoyed making this card as it gave me an opportunity to play with Distress Inks to make a sunset on Ranger watercolour paper which I have never done before.  I had a great play as I tried different colour combinations and have plenty of leftovers to use for other cards.  But first of all, I punched out a circle from a post-it-note to use as a mask so that when it was removed after blending the inks, I had a moon.

I used a round Ranger Blending Tool which I like alot better than the rectangular one as I find that I get less lines.  I used quite a few colours of Distress Inks (which are listed in the Card Recipe below) which you wouldn't probably realise from just looking at my card.  I went from light to dark and just kept blending till I was happy.  I tried to make it a little darker on the LHS and kept it lighter on the RHS where there would be more light from the moon.  I removed the moon mask but decided to add a little watered down Squeezed Lemonade Distress Ink with a paintbrush to the moon to try and make it look more rounded and not quite as white.

The house, tree, pumpkin, tombstones, cat and bats are all from one die called Halloween Hill by Impression Obsession.  I diecut 2 layers from the black cardstock and glued them together so there was a bit more depth.  I used a small scrap of watercolour paper and coloured it yellow using Lemonade Distress ink then cut it to fit in behind the pumpkin face and the windows on the house.  I used a sponge and Hero Arts White dye ink to sponge the edges of the diecut to look like the moon was shining on the various elements then attached the diecut to the inked watercolour paper.  I added some Stampin' Up! Dazzling Diamonds glitter glue plus Kindyglitz Gold glitter glue to the pumpkin face and the windows on the house for a bit of sparkle.

The very front panel is a die by Memory Box - Graveyard Landscape and again, I diecut 2 layers and also sponged the edges with white ink.

The ghosts are also by Memory Box - Ghastly Ghosts which has 5 different ghosts in the set. 

The sentiment is from Hero Arts and was stamped using Versamark Watermark ink and heat-set using Stampin' Up white embossing powder.  I love this embossing powder because it is really white.  I attached 2 Doodlebug brads which I have had in my stash forever.

I used some Mounting Tape to attach the scene to some orange glitter cardstock then attached that to black glitter cardstock using Ranger Wonder tape which is very strong and works really well with glitter cardstock. 

Lastly, I attached some white cobweb across the sky using tiny dots of Tombow Mono Multi glue to look a bit like mist/fog.  This cobweb is from my local supermarket (Woolworths) and comes in a big bag with black spiders and looks like cushion stuffing and costs about $3.  It's really awful to work with as it catches on everything which nearly drove me bonkers - but I like how it looks on my card :-)
Happy Halloween for those of you who celebrate the occasion   We had ALOT more kids/parents visiting us tonight and it was great to catch up with neighbours who were all getting into the spirit of it and just having a happy time with nothing really scary or weird.  I decorated the outside of our house and I noticed that there were alot more decorated houses around compared to previous years.  Seems to be catching on in Australia but not in a creepy way.

Thanks for visiting my blog today!  I have ALOT of blog reading to catch up on! 

Jocelyn


Card Recipe:

Stamps:  Sentiment from Hero Arts Happy Halloween CL353 clear set

Inks:  Versamark Watermark, Hero Arts white dye, Ranger Distress - Squeezed Lemonade, Spice Marmalade, Scattered Straw, Rusty Hinge, Dusty Concord, Faded Jeans, Stormy Sky, Black Soot

Designer paper:  None

Accessories:  Big Shot, Impression Obsession Halloween Hill DIE029P, Memory Box Graveyard Landscape 98375 and Ghastly Ghosts 98701, Ranger round ink blending tool, Doodlebug 1974 Halloween Assortment boutique brads (2008), heat gun, Stampin' Up white embossing powder, Stampin' Up Dazzling details glitter glue, Kindyglitz gold glitter glue, cobweb (supermarket), sponge, 1 inch circle punch + post-it note (for masking moon), Ranger watercolour paper, paintbrush, X-Press It mounting tape, Tombow Mono Multi glue, Ranger doublesided Wonder tape, cardstock - orange glitter, black glitter, white, black